Ruby Johnson - "Don't Play That Song (You Lied)"
Ruby Johnson - "I'll Run Your Hurt Away"

In the the late sixties Ruby Johnson recorded twenty-seven sides for Stax/Volt. From those, Stax could have made four cubes and a triangle, but they could not make a hit, and Johnson was thus dropped from the label. Too bad. Her voice has that proper congestedness for a soul singer - one of the few jobs in which inarticulate displays of emotion are encouraged. Whether through a hoarseness of voice or a reticence in the rhythm of phrasing or simply through the use of grunts and moans where most normal, stable people use words, a soul singer should show us how she feels, in part, by not being able to explain it.

Johnson's soulfulness quotient (her SQ, like Gauss' IQ or Oprah's EQ) is not only benefitted by her employment of all of the above techniques, but also by the Stax house band (note the drumming, in particular, which is powerfully minimal in approach and so perfectly strikes that elusive balance between crispness and resonance in tone) and the Stax house songwriters, who showered Johnson with catching hooks and deep grooves despite her utter inability to overcome her inexplicable public unpopularity.

[Buy]